Sure, it has a two-story, three-bay engine room that houses two engines and the city's haz-mat truck.

But the city's newest firehouse - the 10,000-square-foot Southwest Fire Station at 101 Lancaster Ave. - also has men's and women's quarters and locker rooms, laundry room, kitchen, lunchroom, multiwindowed watch room, conference room, day room, quiet study, and even a workout room with a soft floor and mostly donated equipment.

It has motion-sensor switches to turn lights on and off, a 50-kilowatt emergency generator that's already been needed and so-called Murphy beds that fold into the wall when not in use.

This is the home away from home for firefighters who put in 10- or 14-hour shifts, half of them overnight, Fire Chief William H. Rehr III said.

After a year of construction, the station opened in mid-October at a cost of $2.6 million. As in any building project, Rehr said this one had some glitches, such as with the overhead door operating buttons and the lights for the flag out front.

But the biggest one was that most of the area northwest of Lancaster Avenue was a coal-ash landfill created in the 1800s, and contractors had to dig trenches through 12 feet of ash to find soil stable enough to support the foundation.

With the building open, the city transferred the engines from the old Liberty firehouse at Fifth and Laurel streets and the Oakbrook firehouse on Grace Street.

Why put a firehouse at Lancaster Avenue and Morgantown Road, which is Berks County's busiest intersection?

Because the trucks can go anywhere quickly from there, Rehr said.

Firefighters now have controls on the traffic lights, stopping Lancaster Avenue traffic when trucks leave.

With an average of four calls a day, the station isn't interfering with the traffic too often, Rehr said.

Coming back, the engines pull into a rear driveway that winds around the side of the building to the large apron out front, where they can back into the bays without stopping traffic, as they do at most other firehouses.

Rehr said that on most calls, both engines run together as a team, which is better than two firehouses each sending a truck from different points.

Four people are in the firehouse on any given shift, and to an outsider, the building seems empty.

But the building's not too big, Rehr said

"You need the space for the apparatus, and you always build around the apparatus," he said.

Firefighters on the engines may change and more people may be assigned later. And in blizzards, the department often doubles up on manpower for days at a time.

Besides, he said, at 10,000 square feet, the firehouse is about the national average for new stations, and the $204-per-square-foot construction cost was slightly below the national average.